Sunday, November 01, 2009

Same Ol' New Jersey

New Jersey Republican Chris Christie, who hopes to unseat Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine in next Tuesday's election, is a former U.S. attorney who locked up more than 130 public officials on corruption charges. But what New Jersey needs is a governor willing to confront the state's Supreme Court over who is in charge of school funding. And Mr. Christie has shown no stomach for that fight.

New Jersey's constitution gives the state legislature the power to distribute proceeds of the state's income tax to aid local education and partially relieve the burden of property taxes. But in a succession of school-funding cases over the years, the state Supreme Court has taken control of the $11 billion Property Tax Relief Fund.

The result is a perennial property-tax crisis. The court sends more than half of the state aid to 31 largely urban "special needs" school districts, the special needs of which were for the most part created by decades of Democratic mismanagement. The remaining 554 largely suburban towns fight over the rest...[more]